Why Ethereum’s (ETH) Vitalik Buterin Boycotted Consensus 2018

May 17, 2018

As the Consensus 2018 event came to a close only a few hours ago, one participant was visibly missing from the event in New York. That person is none other than the co-founder, creator and inventor of Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin. Mr. Buterin was also one of the original founders of Bitcoin Magazine that has gained prominence in the Crypto-space over the years.

Buterin had informed the Crypto-verse of his intention to Boycott the Consensus Summit this year via a tweet a while back in mid February. In it, he had the following to say about the event:

I am boycotting @coindesk‘s Consensus 2018 conference this year, and strongly encourage others to do the same. Here is my reasoning why. 1. Coindesk is recklessly complicit in enabling giveaway scams. See their latest article on OMG, which *directly links* to a giveaway scam.

The Tweet was accompanied by the following screenshot that explains the issue further:

Screenshot that accompanied the Tweet highlighting the scam

In this tweet, we see first hand, the first reason Buterin decided to boycott the summit. Coindesk, being the host of Consensus, had published an article (screenshot above) that ‘promoted’ a scam directly. Perhaps the article was an honest mistake. Back in February, scams were not that easy to identify or writers were not cautious enough then.

The article was later updated with edits removing the said fake airdrop of OMG. But the damage had already been done. Buterin had decided not to attend.

He then gave 3 more reasons for his Boycott as outlined below.

On April 26th, and on the same Tweeter thread as the first, Buterin added that he was not pleased with Coindesk’s coverage of EIP 999. The tweet read as follows:

2. Their coverage of EIP 999 was terrible. They published a highly sensationalist article claiming the chain would split, when it was very clear that EIP 999 was *very far* from acceptance. This is why pundits need to be replaced by prediction markets, ASAP.

EIP 999 was a proposal to recover the funds that were locked up in the Parity Wallet.

A third reason Mr. Buterin would not attend the Coindesk event was highlighted by him on the same day via twitter:

3. Their reporting policies are designed to trap you with gotchas. Did you know that if you send them a reply, and you explicitly say that some part is off the record, that’s explicitly on the record unless you go through a request/approve dance first?

The fourth and final reason Mr. Buterin was completely against the summit, was the exorbitant attendance fee of $2,000. Not too many Crypto-enthusiasts can afford to ‘cough out’ that amount of money. Buterin had this to say about the attendance charge at the event:

4. And by the way, the conference costs $2-3k to attend. I refuse to personally contribute to that level of rent seeking.

In conclusion, Vitalik Buterin put forth some valid points for not attending the highly anticipated Consensus Summit that just concluded in New York City. One reason that might hit home for many Crypto-enthusiasts, was the $2,000 attendance fee. This is a large amount of money considering that the crypto-verse is based on the core principal of decentralization and having the ‘little guy’ have a say in the happenings of the industry.

Perhaps what Coindesk might have done to ease the feeling of being left out that many Crypto-enthusiasts might have experienced, was to have a few live feeds via the numerous social media sites and apps. Tron has been known to utilize social media very well when making announcements. Justin Sun and the Tron technical team utilize Twitter and Periscope whenever their is a big announcement such as the recent TestNet launch on the 31st of March.

There is no doubt that a similar live broadcast will be organized for the MainNet launch on the 31st of this month, that is less than 2 weeks away.

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